Archaeologists also are studying two nonroyal female mummies in addition to known mummies such as Tut and his great grandmother Tuya.

Several 18th-dynasty (1550 to 1069 B.C.) queens including Tiye, Nefertiti, and Kiya have not been identified.

Long Wait

It will be many months or even years before the DNA tests are complete.

The fetuses' fragile bones and air contamination may slow the process, experts say.

"The bones [of fetuses] are more brittle, because they weren't completely formed," said Angelique Corthals of Stony Brook University in New York.

"External contamination is going to be a huge problem."

The fetus mummies have likely been corrupted since they were discovered in Tut's tomb in 1922. The specimens were kept in a Cairo hospital in the early 1930s before being moved to Cairo University, where they have resided for more than 70 years.

"We have one that is in fairly acceptable shape and one that it is bad shape," said Ahmed Sameh, dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Cairo University.

Mummy IDs

Studying ancient mummy fetuses is part of a larger recent effort by Egyptian scientists and archaeologists to identify all of the mummies found in Egypt.